When Barry Jenkins' first feature film, "Medicine for Melancholy," was in the theaters, he was nominated for a United States Artists grant. He desperately needed that $50,000, so of course he didn't get it. Three years later, Jenkins, 33, was nominated again. He now has a production company and isn't broke. So he got the award in December, just in time for Christmas.

Q:Describe your occupation.

A: I'm a filmmaker who makes a living by directing commercials and branded content while aspiring to make personal feature films.

Q:United States Artists sounds like a big group. How did they find you?

A: It's anonymous, so I have no idea who nominated me. A random e-mail pops up. If you get nominated, then they send you an application. It's like applying to college.

Q:Are there strings attached?

A: It's an unrestricted grant, so I can do whatever I want with it. It's $50,000 to help me create new work.

Q:Have you ever seen a check that size?

A: I have. The company I helped form, Strike Anywhere Films, we do commercials and branded content. We get big checks a lot. Then we spend them on production.

Q:What kind of production?

A: We do videos for Facebook that are exclusively on the Web, and we do commercials for Southwest Airlines that are broadcast on "NFL Sunday."

Q:Describe "Medicine for Melancholy."

A: It's about two young black urban twentysomethings who meet at a party and have a one-night stand. The guy has a really big chip on his shoulder about race and class in San Francisco, and the girl doesn't want to hear anything about that stuff. So the film is about the city and how it is changing, and how the fact that it is changing is changing the characters.

Q:Have a second feature film in the works?

A: I've been working with Focus Features on a film for 2 1/2 or three years, developing, budgeting and writing, trying to get it green-lit. I'm also rewriting a smaller film with the San Francisco Film Society about a guy who gets out of San Quentin and tries to reintegrate himself into society. It's called "Jeremiad."

Q:Describe your style of filmmaking.

A: My films are personal-voice-driven films about human characters and the place we live. Technically, I'm an independent filmmaker.

Q:I've always wondered how one gets a job as an independent filmmaker?

A: You graduate from film school and move to Hollywood. Hollywood tells you, "We're not the place for you to make films," so you decide you have to make a film yourself.

Q:Is that how you did it?

A: I worked for Oprah Winfrey for two years right out of college, in 2004. I was a director's assistant on the film "Their Eyes Were Watching God," which Oprah produced.

Q:How did you get that job?

A: It was luck, man. I grew up really poor and have always been the type of person who will work earlier or work harder or more than the other person, to even the playing field. I graduated from college on Dec. 14, 2003, and was in L.A. on Dec. 20. I figured everyone else would be gone for the holidays, and if there were any jobs, I will be there to interview. That's exactly what happened.

Q:What got you to the Bay Area?

A: A girl. That's the simple version. The other reason is that the guy who shoots my films, James Laxton, is born and raised in San Francisco. His mom is Aggie Rodgers. She is a costume designer who did "American Graffiti" and "Return of the Jedi." When I left L.A., I came and stayed in her attic, in Noe Valley, for like two years.

A: Cutting grass for my uncle in Miami in the summer. It was brutal work.

Q:Best job?

A: Unloading boxes for $9.50 an hour at Banana Republic on Grant Avenue. I got up at 4:45 in the morning and was on my bike at 5. I'd ride down from Noe Valley. From 5:30 until 2 you stand around a table with a dozen people all from different backgrounds, races and ages. There were people who didn't speak English, and yet we're all communicating.

Q:Last job?

A: I was working as a carpenter, and a guy I was working with started talking to me about this film he had seen, called "Medicine for Melancholy." He asked if I had seen it. I smiled and said, "Yeah. I've seen it."